Dynamic Performance Assessment of Hospitals by Applying Credibility-Based Fuzzy Window Data Envelopment Analysis

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Operations Research
• Data Analysis

Background:

• Dynamic performance evaluation of hospitals is crucial for strategic decision-making.
• Existing methods often struggle with data ambiguity and linguistic variables inherent in healthcare data.
• Accurate hospital performance assessment requires robust methodologies that account for temporal changes and uncertainty.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose the Credibility-based Fuzzy Window Data Envelopment Analysis (CFWDEA) as a novel approach for dynamic hospital performance evaluation.
• To address challenges posed by data ambiguity and linguistic variables in assessing hospital efficiency over time.
• To demonstrate the applicability and efficacy of the CFWDEA method using real-world hospital data.

Main Methods:

• Integration of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), window analysis, possibilistic programming, credibility theory, and chance-constrained programming (CCP).
• Development of the CFWDEA model to incorporate fuzzy data and linguistic variables.
• Application of the CFWDEA approach to a dataset of US hospitals for dynamic performance appraisal.

Main Results:

• The proposed CFWDEA method successfully evaluates and ranks hospitals under conditions of fuzzy data and epistemic uncertainty.
• Experimental results validate the usefulness of CFWDEA for dynamic performance appraisal, considering multiple inputs and outputs.
• The approach effectively handles linguistic variables, enhancing the reliability of performance evaluations.

Conclusions:

• The CFWDEA approach offers a robust and effective solution for dynamic hospital performance evaluation in complex data environments.
• This methodology provides valuable insights for hospital management and policy-making by accounting for data ambiguity and uncertainty.
• CFWDEA represents a significant advancement in applying advanced analytical techniques to healthcare performance assessment.